JAMES TABOR

Dr. James Tabor retired (2022) as a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he taught Christian origins and ancient Judaism, for 33 years, serving as Chair for a decade. His Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame and the College of William and Mary. Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive fieldwork in archaeology in Israel and Jordan. 

Since 2008 he has been co-director, with Shimon Gibson, of the acclaimed Mt. Zion excavation in Jerusalem. He was also involved in the 1993 Waco tragedy drawing upon his expertise in understanding ancient Biblical apocalyptic ideas and he testified before Congress in the 1995 Waco Hearings.
 

Among his publications are Things Unutterable (1985), A Noble Death (1992) Why Waco: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995) and The Jesus Dynasty (Simon & Schuster, 2006). In 2012 he published two books: The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) and Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (Simon & Schuster). Dr. Tabor has completed a new book, The Lost Mary: From the Jewish Mother of Jesus to the Virgin Mother of God which is out in French (Flammarion, 2020) but will appear in English late next year (Knopf, 2022).

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Tabor has a professional blog that deals with Biblical Studies and contains links to his published articles (jamestabor.com), as well as a poplar Youtube Channel (JamesTaborVideos), a web site that archives his teaching resources for his classes and lectures (The Jewish Roman World of Jesus)    and a personal blog that explores philosophical, aesthetic, and existential perspectives: Genesia.org.